Michael Gerson: Obama: Adrift on a red-ink sea

6:40 AM,
Mar. 7, 2013

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michael gerson

One revealing stress test of a political viewpoint is the way it deals with facts that are large, consequential and ideologically inconvenient.

For liberals, the challenge is deficits and debt. President Obama now argues that we are "more than halfway towards the $4 trillion in deficit reduction that economists and elected officials from both parties say we need to stabilize our debt." Economist Paul Krugman calls the deficit "a problem that is already, to a large degree, solved."

Downplaying the debt - arguing that it has stabilized as a percentage of GDP in a 10-year window - has become an ...